She was in a mood, clearly. She remembered a day last summer. Lily had stepped on one of her paintings with the paint still wet. That had been beyond infuriating. And then Joey had gone to lunch with her mother and a strong wind had sent Bea’s skirt up to her chest, and it had been clear to Joey, and the whole of Liston, that Bea wore no underwear underneath. It had been really embarrassing, and the worst part was that Bea hadn’t even apologized! She’d maintained it was her right to exist sans lingerie at any time or place of her choosing. That actually she should be praised for unbinding the shackles of modern women. She’d had the audacity to suggest that Joey might find herself a little less uptight if she were to abandon her underwear too.

Leo had been on the terrace when Joey got back. It had all been a swirl, a raging swirl, and Leo had said, “Sit down, Jones.” She’d sat. “Tell me,” he’d said.

“I’m just…ugh at my mom and Lily!”

“Okay, tell me more.”

“If you really want to know, I feel all…like…annoyed…and down. Really angry. Distraught.” She’d felt herself getting even more riled up. There had been an overall feeling surging, a very particular one, that she hadn’t been able to wrap inside words. “I feel all zigzaggy.”

“Yeah,” Leo had said, and she’d been able to tell by his voice he was taking her seriously, “zigzaggy. Sounds bad. So, which way is it zigging?”

“Here.” She’d pointed to her chest and felt his hand settle on the part of her that was zigzagging like crazy in a downward motion, toward her left foot.

Leo had said, “Is it still zigging?”

She’d said, “It’s zagging now, really fucking sharp.”

And he’d said, “I can feel it,” and so they’d sat like that for a little, as the zigzags came, and she’d felt like they were attached to a string and there was someone outside her pulling at the string, unfolding the zigs and the zags until they settled in a straight calm line and ejected right out of her, landing in a heap at her left foot.

She’d been so grateful then to have her person—the one she could tell about all the strange things that lived inside her.

But that had been last summer. And right now on the beach at Paleokastritsa, Leo didn’t feel like someone she could tell about her zigzags. He felt like a person vanishing right before her eyes. They’d had plans—finishing college and then moving to the same city. New York probably, because its urban possibility was so far from their sleepy hometowns in Florida and Michigan. But maybe on reflection now, those had been her plans, and Leo had never seemed sure about a settled-down life.